Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are hollow cylinders composed of one or more concentric layers of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice. CNTs are widely considered as an elemental material for a future nanoelectronic technology. This is not simply due to their small size but rather to their overall properties: CNTs are known to exhibit either metallic or semiconducting behaviour, with the band gap being dependent on the nanotube diameter. Both active devices (transistors) and interconnects can be made out of semiconducting and metallic nanotubes, respectively. The key nanotube dimension, their diameter, is controlled by chemistry, not conventional fabrication. The strong covalent bonding gives the CNTs high mechanical and thermal stability and ability to sustain current densities as high as 10 A/cm².

© 2005 Optical Society of America